Ola Raises $ 36 Million From New York Based Hedge Fund

Ola, homegrown cab hailing startup, has raised $ 36 million from Tekne Capital Management, a New York based hedge fund, according to filings with the Registrar of Companies.

VCCircle reported, the company allocated 171,173 fully and compulsorily convertible preference shares at Rs. 13,521 apiece. Delaware based Tekne Private Ventures III LP invested Rs. 167.15 crores for about 1.23 lakh shares while 47,548 shares worth Rs. 64.28 crores were issued to Tekne Private Ventures I Master from the Cayman Islands.

The new shares were allotted at the same price at which Ola raised $ 104.4 million from Falcon Edge Capital and Ratan Tata’s RNT Capital Advisers. According to the filings, these shares were allocated on 7 June 2017, after a board resolution was passed on May 29. Ola’s valuation could not be ascertained as it is not clear whether this investment is a part of a larger funding round or if more investors are involved. In August 2015, Ola was valued to be close to $ 4.8 billion while media reports in February this year pegged its valuation to be around $3.5 billion.

In April this year, the cab aggregator company raised $ 250 million from Japan’s SoftBank Group Corp., making SoftBank Ola’s largest investor. They also raised $50 million (Rs. 322 crores) from Tekne Capital Management LLC., and were in talks with Coatue Management LLC., for raising more funds.

Ola and US based Uber Technologies Ltd., have been locked in a fierce battle to capture India’s lucrative cab hailing market. Ola has also launched local innovations better suited for the Indian market, including a bike taxi service, Ola Bike. It was also reported, Microsoft was likely to invest $50-100 million in Ola, resulting in Ola switching to Microsoft’s cloud computing platform Azure from Amazon Web Services.

For the financial year 2015 – 2016, Ola’s operating revenue jumped to Rs. 438.6 crores from Rs. 57.5 crores while their consolidated net loss tripled to Rs. 2,311.7 crores. The total expenditure surged to Rs. 3,078.19 crores from Rs. 899.7 crores the year before. At present, Ola operates in 100 Indian cities while Uber has a presence in only 29 cities.